Education: A Lifelong Practice
Education options are a critical factor for any family looking to consider life in a new community.
The NewVistas concept would be unlikely to succeed without continually demonstrating that raising children in a NewVistas community can provide superior education opportunities for them. Even those without children would like to know that their tax dollars are well spent and will yield valuable contributions to their community.
And there is always something new that adults would like to learn throughout their lives, but they simply don’t have the time or resources to make it happen.
By focusing education efforts across all ages, mental and physical abilities, and skill levels, education solutions can work over a larger scale.
Learners
Education is organized in the ordinary K-12 system. However, school days, weeks, and years are structured differently. Each student takes 3 lessons per day, for four days a week – Monday to Thursday. These lessons, regardless of the level, are reading, writing, and math/ arithmetic. A year has four terms, corresponding with the four quarters of a year. There are no long holidays, with students learning for 13 weeks. Allowing for public holidays, this translates to 48 school days a quarter, and 192 days a year.
Each lesson runs for 45 minutes, with a part devoted to a lecture or a presentation by the teacher, and the rest of the time dedicated to explanations, group discussions, and other interactive exercises. classes start from 9AM up to 9PM, giving learners sufficient room for flexibility. for instance, a student who is 14 years old, and in grade 9, can have his reading class at 9AM, go help his parent run a grocery store upto lunch time, take lunch at 12, have a writing class from 1 – 1:45 PM, go back to the grocery store, or run some errands, and have a math class at 5 – 5:45PM.
Formal education focuses on the first 12 years of education. in this time, a student has managed to get a bearing on their future business, can competently start a business, and are able to integrate well into society. Beyond this, education focuses on gaining valuable skills, rather than acquiring certifications.
Teachers
Teachers take a maximum of three lessons per day, and thherefore, ust like students, have a maximum of 12 lessons a week. Most mature limited partners, who have already been running successful business, have much to offer in various stages of formal education. therefore, ther e is a large number of teachers, who give students both knowledge and practical business and life skills. For this reason, most teachers will have less than 3 lessons a day, and in most cases, just one class a day.
Students pay 5 dollars per lesson. Each class has a maximum of 12 students, who are recruited by the teacher. A teacher is expected to strive to have their classes at capacity, for a more impactful learning experience. the number also helps them earn sustainable profits from their business.
Teachers are not in full-time teaching business, for the most part. Those who take maximum classes per day – 3 – also have time to engage in other businesses. For instance, a teacher who takes 3 biology lessons for students in grades 10, 11, and 12, could also be working as a research associate for a biotechnology business for 8 hours a week, translating to an hour from Monday to Thursday, and 4 hours on Friday. All instruction is in person. Virtual or remote classes are not allowed.
Education structure
Education aims to achieve three goals – impart knowledge, provide constant mentorship across all levels of education, thereby improving mastery and business readiness, and promote lifelong learning.
Successful businesses are powered by sound business practices and the skills possessed by the business owner, including their capacity to apply them to serve their customers. This fact informs the community’s focus on skills, their application, and innovation, rather than certifications which in some cases are hardly applicable in real-world situations. The Life Planning Agency, which handles education, coordinates the education system to achieve these aims, and in the process, ensure that education serves as an engiine of innovation and business success.
The Life Planning Agency maintains an automated system through which teachers interact with other teachers, and their students. Teachers can display their ratings, experience, areas of expertise, and even, other professionals they collaborate with.
Participation in formal education is compulsory for all those eligible. Subsequent education levels are voluntary. Given the ease of access to these opportunities, limited partners will often embark on further education and training to become better in their business, and attract more customers.
Other community agencies and businesses have a vested interest in ensuring that businesses are successful – it means more profits, and in the long-term, sustainability of the NewVistas system, as well as its spread around the world, and the safety in numbers that comes with it. businesses can only succeed if the people running them are comptent, a quality obtained from education.
Current Education Issues
National one-size-fits-all policies can often struggle to address different learning styles, abilities, cultures, and other differentiating factors.
Federal standardized testing requirements are one way we have strived to ensure schools were funded and met essential pedagogical needs.
But an unintended result is that continually prepping students through six years of testing increases costs, incentivizes arbitrary grouping of students and teachers across all subjects, and distracts many otherwise effective schools from their core education objectives.
Many U.S. states can be fairly lenient as to what is required in a homeschool or independent school arrangement. But parents of children outside of the public-school system still bear the costs of the public school system,1 and they do not receive any form of equivalent subsidy to assist with the alternative education program they have chosen.
Education faces other problems tied to related social and economic issues, which a NewVistas community also works to address. For instance, sU.S. schools are more segregated than they have been in decades.2
Divisions of social and economic classes make it difficult for many school systems to achieve the number of participants needed to support more individualized education plans and a healthy cross-pollination of ideas.
Many parents are overworked and are often commuting several hours each day to support expensive isolated homes, disconnected from basic needs, and in locales failing to offer a school system that they can put their confidence in.
They don’t have the time to supplement their child’s education directly—let alone take the time to further their own education.
Charter schools have shown some promise in some states, but many charter schools are often controlled by purely for-profit entities, and their incentives can be misaligned with serving the needs of children.
Existing education systems to date have allowed the world to advance in many respects.
Perhaps we haven’t had adequate technology or been organized enough as people to create a more affordable and individualized education system or to provide public support for education throughout life.
The physical and legal structure of a NewVistas community, and the technology it employs, are intended to free more resources—so that more is available to care for ourselves, others, and our community.
Among other things, NewVistas communities prioritize their resources toward maintaining a healthy learning environment for all individuals.
NewVistas Education Goals & Recommendations
While the proposed education structure is revolutionary, NewVistas communities strive to conform with any legal provisions for education. This is likely to be easy in most cases, because the core focus of regulations is to ensure universal access, quality outcomes, among others. The community system satisfies these requirements easily.
The community needs to find a way to ensure that its residents can meet the requirements of the jurisdiction while leaving both parents and children adequate time to pursue their passions, achieve their potential, and help the rest of the community to do the same.
As in all econosystem industries, local consumption of educational goods and services must be encouraged for the benefit of the education economy and the econosystem as a whole.
Practical work experience needs to be encouraged from a young age to foster a strong work ethic from the start and to create more opportunities to find careers where the student can thrive most. From 12, young participants are encouraged to start a business, and save up to raise the $20,000 needed to become a limited partner.
Academic and career fulfillment is encouraged to continue throughout life to the extent feasible—both for the health and wellbeing of the elderly and disabled and the sustainable productivity of the community.nity will provide resources to support the activity and may even supplement the wage.
Apprenticeship
When minors start their businesses, after their 12th birthday, they usually do so by subcontracting with existing businesses. Often these businesses will belong to their guardians, who can properly mentor them. Besides being a means of building a potentially successful business, these initial stages are seen as a valuable practical learning opportunity.
As the aspiring limited partner becomes better in their business, they can take on additional clients, earning and saving more, and gaining more rounded experience. For instance, a teenager can start basic coding for their parent, who has a programming business, may soon find other gigs as their programming skills become better. This improves their earning potential, and skills.
Businesses, whose owners are also likely to be teachers, are encouraged to take on these young people to further their education.
Affordability
Students pay an average of 5 dollars per lesson. For most students, this equates to $15 per day, $60 per week, and 2,880 dollars per year. This is affordable for most limited partners and their children, with some of those unable, probably because of being orphaned and other unfortunate circumstances being sponsored by their branch.
Higher Education
Higher education is not required by law in most professions and therefore is not viewed as essential in a NewVistas unless one is pursuing a profession requiring college coursework. VistaBizzes are required to hire based on proven skill and not make considerations based on higher-education degrees.
Very few NewVistas communities would likely have any form of accredited college on-site—at least not in the form we are typically familiar with.
The expense of college and relocating there for several years is less justified in a world where we can now collaborate and share resources more easily than ever before, and it is certainly not scalable and sustainable for everyone worldwide.
NewVistas communities would strive to have their education program equipped to handle the jurisdictional requirements of all professions.
By working with regulators to adjust requirements or by leveraging global collaborations with other NewVistas communities and other educational institutions, most educational needs can be met from within a NewVistas community’s borders.
Students can take advantage of those global opportunities while still contributing to the community that made their education possible.
Continuing Education
The only other reason an adult would be required to engage in essential education programs would be if they were seeking a career with educational prerequisites or have a career with continuing education responsibilities.
It would be a condition of residency that one does not operate in a profession without being in full compliance with appropriate regulations.
The community would strive to have offerings to fulfill these requirements or if it couldn’t make such measures, would provide the student with some degree of flexibility so that they could pursue unmet portions of the course of study elsewhere.
Education Policy: A Three-Pillared Approach
The three pillars of a NewVistas education relate to the blend of learning experiences that each community enables residents to pursue.
They reflect policies of the communities to encourage a balanced mix of (1) teaching; (2) guided mentorship; and (3) demonstrated mastery.3
The first pillar exists to encourage educating ourselves and others and focuses on enabling the teaching side of the transaction.
Similarly, guided mentorship promotes mentoring through general life management and academia, as well as in internships and apprenticeships.
Learning is directly emphasized through the mastery pillar, which establishes policies to confirm the effectiveness of the community-supported teaching and mentoring activities.
These pillars of a NewVistas education are discussed in detail below.
With policies driven by the goal of maintaining these pillars, the result is a more affordable education custom-tailored to each student, lifelong learning that creates a stronger member base; and the volume of education participants needed to boost the effectiveness of the education system as a whole.
Teaching
While there are professional teachers in the community, most of those who offer classes are in fact business owners who happen to have expertise in various areas. for this reason, many business owners are also teachers, while professional tutors may also have other businesses as research associates, curriculum developers, invigilators, and lesson planners.
The community incentivizes business owenrs to teach by providing them resiurces, including space, teaching aides, and access to the automated system throguh which they can engage their students. They also stand to earn well fom their efforts – with 12 students in a class, teachers earn a net of $50 per hour.
Mentored Learning
Mentors provide an unbiased perspective of a child or adult’s academic or career path and the guidance needed to help the student achieve their goals.
Mentoring relates less to learning as the teaching pillar but rather refers to perfecting the practice of life, learning, and work. They help students of all ages get through the challenges of daily life—whether it’s just learning to pack a good lunch and be ready for the day or helping someone seize a career change opportunity and avoid unemployment.
Mentors are matched with particular students by coordinating with their village president and with the assistance of the Life Planning automated system, which account for the student’s mastery to date, and which mentors or teachers they have worked well with in the past.
Everybody in a NewVistas community is expected to contribute in some capacity, whether through community governance or other volunteer work.
But mentoring is emphasized most, and communities may require that individuals engage in at least some mentoring each year.
Demonstrated Mastery
Mentors also help guide the child to academic and practical offerings that the student can pursue passionately and where the student can feasibly attain mastery of the subject area.
Mastery in a NewVistas refers to the alternative used over the traditional A to F grading system in all NewVistas learning experiences. It is effectively a pass/fail grading system for both classroom and hands-on courses of study.
The system protects the students from underserved blemishes on their records resulting from taking classes they weren’t equipped for or otherwise ready to pursue.
And it ensures that they have at least some minimal level of skill before proceeding to the next stage of study or work experience in a subject area. Mentors can assist students in areas where they are struggling to attain mastery so they can proceed to the next stage or can help in creating a course plan which can ultimately help the student achieve mastery of marketable skills that are also fulfilling for the student to pursue.
A student’s attainment of mastery through classroom or work experience is confidentially tracked for the student.
The student, or their parent or guardian, has the option to disclose portions of this background as much or as little as they like, as may be needed for job searches or pursuits of various academic opportunities.
- Lobbying to maintain those systems further increases costs and often perpetuates policies that don’t serve the intended populations. Valerie Strauss, Big Education Firms Spend Millions on Lobbying for Pro-Testing Policies (Mar. 30, 2015).[↩]
- Gov. Accountability Office Study: Segregation worsening in U.S. schools, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/05/17/gao-study-segregation-worsening-us-schools/84508438/ (last visited Dec. 2, 2016).[↩]
- The three pillars of a NewVistas education is an independently developed concept, but they do resemble learning rubrics demonstrated in other education initiatives. UNESCO offers four pillars in its guiding principles of education: Knowing, Doing, Living Together (socializing), and Being. Some religious teachings emphasize similar pillars. Teaching, Practice, and Enlightenment are described as the Three Pillars of Zen, which is the title of the widely read book on Zen Buddhism by Philip Kapleau. The NewVistas education pillars similarly represent a recommended daily lifelong practice, but the policies do not prescribe the substance of the education, nor any guiding principles of any religion. The Good Life by Helen Nearing, provides a more secular reflection of similar ideas in this nonfiction experiential guide to homesteading. This book promotes a healthy blend of academic, survival, and social activities—calling for 4 hours of each on daily basis. This is perhaps closest to the NewVistas concept, but the policies do not dictate how one should achieve the blend through the year or on a given day. And the social component is replaced by mastery—promoting high-level social and economic interactions by connecting continually those with similar or supplemental knowledge and ability.[↩]